Part 10 (1/2)
Horrible, was it? thought Oleron. Then let her get away....
”I only want to help you, Paul.... I didn't promise not to come if you needed me....”
He was impervious to the pitiful sob that interrupted the low cry. The devil take the woman! Should he shout to her to go away and not come back? No: let her call and knock and sob. She had a gift for sobbing; she mustn't think her sobs would move him. They irritated him, so that he set his teeth and shook his fist at her, but that was all. Let her sob.
”_Paul!... Paul!_...”
With his teeth hard set, he dropped the first page of _Romilly_ into the fire. Then he began to drop the rest in, sheet by sheet.
For many minutes the calling behind his door continued; then suddenly it ceased. He heard the sound of feet slowly descending the stairs. He listened for the noise of a fall or a cry or the crash of a piece of the handrail of the upper landing; but none of these things came. She was spared. Apparently her rival suffered her to crawl abject and beaten away. Oleron heard the pa.s.sing of her steps under his window; then she was gone.
He dropped the last page into the fire, and then, with a low laugh rose.
He looked fondly round his room.
”Lucky to get away like that,” he remarked. ”She wouldn't have got away if I'd given her as much as a word or a look! What devils these women are!... But no; I oughtn't to say that; one of 'em showed forbearance....”
Who showed forbearance? And what was forborne? Ah, Oleron knew!... Contempt, no doubt, had been at the bottom of it, but that didn't matter: the pestering creature had been allowed to go unharmed.
Yes, she was lucky; Oleron hoped she knew it....
And now, now, now for his reward!
Oleron crossed the room. All his doors were open; his eyes shone as he placed himself within that of his bedroom.
Fool that he had been, not to think of destroying the ma.n.u.script sooner!...
How, in a houseful of shadows, should he know his own Shadow? How, in a houseful of noises, distinguish the summons he felt to be at hand? Ah, trust him! He would know! The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights.
The blind at his elbow that allowed the light of a street lamp to struggle vaguely through--the glimpse of greeny blue moonlight seen through the distant kitchen door--the sulky glow of the fire under the black ashes of the burnt ma.n.u.script--the glimmering of the tulips and the moon-daisies and narcissi in the bowls and jugs and jars--these did not so trick and bewilder his eyes that he would not know his Own! It was he, not she, who had been delaying the shadowy Bridal; he hung his head for a moment in mute acknowledgment; then he bent his eyes on the deceiving, puzzling gloom again. He would have called her name had he known it--but now he would not ask her to share even a name with the other....
His own face, within the frame of the door, glimmered white as the narcissi in the darkness....
A shadow, light as fleece, seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had pa.s.sed over the unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer (the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter going his rounds had turned low the flame of the lamp). The fire settled, letting down the black and charred papers; a flower fell from a bowl, and lay indistinct upon the floor; all was still; and then a stray draught moved through the old house, pa.s.sing before Oleron's face....
Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little from the door-jamb.
The wandering draught caused the door to move a little on its hinges.
Oleron trembled violently, stood for a moment longer, and then, putting his hand out to the k.n.o.b, softly drew the door to, sat down on the nearest chair, and waited, as a man might await the calling of his name that should summon him to some weighty, high and privy Audience....
XI
One knows not whether there can be human compa.s.sion for anemia of the soul. When the pitch of Life is dropped, and the spirit is so put over and reversed that that only is horrible which before was sweet and worldly and of the day, the human relation disappears. The sane soul turns appalled away, lest not merely itself, but sanity should suffer.
We are not G.o.ds. We cannot drive out devils. We must see selfishly to it that devils do not enter into ourselves.
And this we must do even though Love so transfuse us that we may well deem our nature to be half divine. We shall but speak of honour and duty in vain. The letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded, or, if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses, left and forgotten again. The telegram will be undelivered, nor will the whistling messenger (wiselier guided than he knows to whistle) be conscious as he walks away of the drawn blind that is pushed aside an inch by a finger and then fearfully replaced again. No: let the miserable wrestle with his own shadows; let him, if indeed he be so mad, clip and strain and enfold and couch the succubus; but let him do so in a house into which not an air of Heaven penetrates, nor a bright finger of the sun pierces the filthy twilight. The lost must remain lost. Humanity has other business to attend to.
For the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing noiselessly one June day into his kitchen to rid his sitting-room of an armful of fetid and decaying flowers, had seen on the floor within his door, had had no more meaning for him than if it had belonged to some dim and faraway dream. And at the beating of the telegraph-boy upon the door, within a few feet of the bed where he lay, he had gnashed his teeth and stopped his ears. He had pictured the lad standing there, just beyond his part.i.tion, among packets of provisions and bundles of dead and dying flowers. For his outer landing was littered with these. Oleron had feared to open his door to take them in. After a week, the errand lads had reported that there must be some mistake about the order, and had left no more. Inside, in the red twilight, the old flowers turned brown and fell and decayed where they lay.
Gradually his power was draining away. The Abomination fastened on Oleron's power. The steady sapping sometimes left him for many hours of prostration gazing vacantly up at his red-tinged ceiling, idly suffering such fancies as came of themselves to have their way with him.